Coronary atherosclerosis and antecedent risk factors: pathologic and epidemiologic study in Hisayama, Japan

The pathologic and epidemiologic study of coronary atherosclerosis was performed on 281 autopsy subjects aged 40 years and older during the period between 1971 and 1981, in Hisayama, Kyushu Island, Japan. During this interval, the autopsy rate was about 80%. Grading of coronary atherosclerosis was made by the degree of luminal stenosis. Seven selected factors such as age, gender, mean arterial blood pressure, serum total cholesterol, body mass index, alcohol intake and cigarette smoking were all given attention. The severity of coronary atherosclerosis revealed age-related progression. Coronary atherosclerosis correlated positively with antecedent elevated blood pressure and with higher serum total cholesterol levels. In multivariate analysis, factors that significantly (p less than 0.05) and positively correlated with coronary atherosclerosis were age, mean arterial blood pressure, serum total cholesterol, gender and body mass index in this order. The overall contribution of 7 selected factors to coronary atherosclerosis was nearly 33.5% of the total variation by the analysis of multiple regression model.